His touch starts tender along my jaw, but gains force as he grabs the back of my neck.
“Are you sure I haven’t already?” He tightens his fingers at the back of my head, pulling my hair until I’m looking straight up at him. He’s himself again. Powerful. Arrogant. Fierce.
He’s a king returning from a battle that nearly killed him, and I am grateful.
“You have, so much, and you love me.”
“Tell me to stop.” He takes my shirt by the neck and pulls hard, tearing it down the front. “Tell me I’d stop if I loved you.” I can’t move my head as he pulls up my bra.
The terror that filled his expression before is still there, but it’s strapped down by a rigid control, bucking and bloating, stretching the limits of the harness. It will break free without a valve.
I am that valve.
This whole time—the rage, the violence, the controlling demands—all of it was fear.
“You love me. Don’t stop.”
“Love is a liability.” By the hair, he drags me to the hall and throws me up the staircase, pinning my lower back with his knee. “Tell me to stop.”
“I’m not scared.”
With one move, he yanks my pants down. “I made you reckless.”
A burning sting explodes on my bare bottom. He’s never hit me that hard.
“You made me see.”
He smacks me again and pulls my pants all the way off. I twist onto my back, where the edge of the stairs digs into my spine. He pulls off the shreds of my shirt, pushing me to the top of the stairs at the same time as he wrestles off my bra. I’m naked, breathless, halfway up a flight of stairs.
“I love you,” I say.
“Sure you do.” Violently, he pulls my legs open, exposing me to a gaze that has its own pressure. “Say stop or say nothing.”
“I love you.”
“Enough.” He unbuckles his belt. “I swear to God, your next word is stop or it’s nothing.”
“Nothing.”
“Turn over.” He slides the leather belt through the loops. “Hands and knees.”
When I obey to put elbows on one step and knees three steps below, he cracks my ass with the belt.
“Nothing!” I cry.
“Crawl to the bedroom.”
I do as I’m told. With each move forward, he tries to hurt me out of loving him, beating me on like a pack mule. He pulls me onto the bed, flips me onto my back, and opens my legs, brandishing the belt.
I cringe, waiting for him to hit me where I’m most sensitive.
“Tell me to stop.”
“Nothing.”
“Fucking Colonia.”
He doesn’t hit between my legs but uses the belt to strap my left elbow to my left knee. I cringe all over again when he gets another belt from his closet, but he doesn’t hit my pussy with it. Instead, he ties my free elbow and knee together, leaving me splayed before him as he undoes his fly.
“I should lock you in the basement.” His pants drop below his waist as he pulls off his shirt. “Let you wait until I come back.”
“Nothing.”
He steps out of his pants, naked now, hard-on raging. “You think I won’t because I love you?”
“Nothing.”
He slaps his palm between my legs. I jerk with pain, then burst pleasure. He slaps again, pauses, then again, so hard I grunt through my teeth.
“I can stop.”
“Nothing,” I cry through spit and tears.
He puts his hands inside my thighs, spreading me wide so he can see how sore and red I am. When his grip gets too tight to bear, I whimper, but he doesn’t let up.
“If they catch you, they’re going to put you in the staffa—with your arms strapped down this time—and when they find out I fucked you, they’re going to let any aggrieved party fuck you. Then they’re going to hollow you like they did to Dafne, but they won’t kill you. They’ll sew you back up so they can sell you as a virgin.” He takes his hands away. “I won’t let that happen.”
When his cock touches my pussy, I’m so sore to the touch that I cringe and gasp, but I’m so wet he stretches the beaten skin and slides right in.
“Look at me,” he says when he’s buried to the root. “Look at this man who loves you and tell me to stop hurting you.”
I haven’t lied to him. What he’s doing feels good and right. His pain, so carefully placed for my ecstasy, is what I never dared crave.
I challenged him to make me stop loving him, but at this moment, his response is somehow empty. I don’t want to be punished out of love. I want to be cared for through every single thing. I want to be loved not despite my mistakes, but because of them. Because they’re mine, and though I don’t want to be defined by my imperfections, I want to be loved for them. I want less, and much, much more.
“Stop.” My voice shakes, but he freezes. He’s not even breathing. Instinctively, I know he’s waiting for my confirmation, so I swallow, take a strong breath, and say two words with steady purpose. “Stop. Please.”
He stops immediately and bends over me to kiss the space between my breasts.
“What do you want?” he murmurs into my skin, asking my heart for its deepest desire.
“I want you to love me.”
After a pause, he kneels straight and unlashes my right elbow and knee.
“If that’s what you want.” He tosses the belt aside and goes to the other one. “That’s what you’ll have.”
When the second belt is off, he gently lowers my knee. I caress his face, drawing the shape of his cheekbones with my thumbs, tracing the dark circles under his eyes. He rests his elbows on either side of my head and kisses every part of my face.
“Whatever you want.”
“I want you to be mine as much as I’m yours,” I say.
“I am.”
He believes it, and months ago, when I was a different person, I might have believed it too. But I’m different, and so is he.
“You’ve given me every part of you that you’re willing to give,” I say.
A little voice in my head suggests that maybe I shouldn’t be asking for anything. He’s a man. I’ve been raised to do what he tells me. That voice is quiet. It makes statements in the form of a question and tells me to obey the strict harangues of my grandmother. It’s afraid of punishment and consequences.
There’s another voice, and it’s not afraid. It’s been waiting for its moment, and that moment is here.
“I want more.” I wrap my legs around Dario and pull him close.
“Tell me how much more.” With a shift, he’s inside me again, gently rocking side to side. “It’s yours.”
“I want everything you’re not willing to give me.” I hold his face to mine, nose to nose, eye to eye. “I want your regrets.”
“I regret everything I did to you. But nothing that brought me to you.”
A halo of quiet euphoria ripples outward from our joined bodies, but I keep my eyes on his.
“I want your anger.”
“No.”
“Yes. Say yes. I don’t need protection from you.”
He doesn’t look away. “I can’t.”